The morning conditioning workout was from CrossFit Football. I liked it. The rowing was not an all-out, melt your eyeballs kinda thing, but still an intense effort. The farmer’s walks were a severe grip test. I only had six and a half yards to do them in, so I had to do lots of turning around. The first one I kind of lollygagged along, but I figured out real quick that the faster I walked the faster I could set those suckers down. My hands, zey are claws!

The upper body work following the bench press is from CrossFit Virtuosity. They posted a “Get Strict” program the other day that is aimed to help you get strict pullups if you don’t have them yet.

(Raising hand.) That would be me.

The last few years I’ve noticed something about myself. I thrive on structure. Even though I am a creative, artsy-fartsy type (though not of the long haired, tie-dye wearing, dope smoking variety) I love having a plan. A plan, a plan, a plan. That’s why I adore Wendler 5/3/1 – I can click a few buttons on a spreadsheet and see every workout I’ll do for a whole month. Delicious!

Like everyone else, I kind of got hooked on the “unknown and unknowable” shtick from CrossFit. You know how it is, refreshing the page every night to see the next days workout. Like crack, my friends, like crack. However, after a while I started to yearn for my old structure. Granted, I had structure before CrossFit, namely Body For Life strength workouts and running three times a week. However, I failed to change the weights on my strength sessions and used the same workouts for two years and wondered why I didn’t progress. Duh. As for the running, can you say overtrained?

Thanks to CrossFit I had discovered awesomeness like Mark Rippetoe, Mike Burgener, Greg Everett and Performence Menu, Zach Even-Esh, and of course, Jim Wendler and Dave Tate. Now that I understand things like linear periodization the structure is awesome. Also, deadlifts, squats and power cleans totally kick the ass of hamstring curls, calf raises and flyes. No wonder I was bored.

And, I still refresh the page each night even though I don’t do the workouts any more.

Like crack.

Furthermore… after watching the video of an HQ trainer review the “programming” for the month it is painfully obvious he doesn’t have a clue what he’s doing. Seriously, why would you post that? Granted, it’s still not as bad as the “At the Chalkboard” ramblings, but it still gives the Iron Garm folks plenty of fodder.